Research & Development Competition

The oil and gas E&P industry faces big challenges to meet the world's growing energy needs. And we don't have all the answers. For that reason, the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) is holding an R&D Competition specifically to encourage researchers from the basic sciences and other engineering disciplines to engage in our challenges. The competition focuses on six Grand Challenges identified by the SPE R&D Committee (follow the links to additional detail on each challenge):

• Increasing recovery factors from oil and gas fields

• In-situ molecular manipulation

• Carbon capture, storage, and sequestration

• Produced water management

• Higher-resolution subsurface imaging of hydrocarbons

• Minimized environmental impact

The competition is open to academia, research institutes and organizations, companies, and individual investigators. Proposals submitted should include the following requirements:

• Address one of the six Grand Challenges listed above
• Involve ideas and/or technologies not previously used in petroleum engineering
• Propose application of technology NOT already used commercially in the oil and gas industry

The top five or six finalists will be invited as guests of SPE to the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in Amsterdam, 27- 29 October 2014, where they will present their proposal in a special session to a panel of industry judges. Awards of USD 30,000 for first place, USD 20,000 for second place, and USD 10,000 for third place will be announced at the President's Luncheon on the last day of the conference.

Submissions for the competition are being accepted online through 1 June 2014. Early submitters (by 31 March) will have the opportunity to be assigned an industry mentor to provide advice on how to improve the proposal before the final submission deadline.

 The R&D Competition Application will be available on 17 February.

Submit a Proposal Application

Proposals will be judged by a panel made up of members of the R&D Committee and the R&D Technical Section as well as representatives of sponsoring companies. Judging will be based on the following criteria:

• The extent of the use of basic science or technology new to the oil and gas industry
• The novelty of the science or technology being proposed
• The probability of success
• The reasonableness of the timeline and resources required
• The impact to the oil and gas industry if the project is successful

Proposals will be made available to the judging panel and published on SPE.org after the competition.

Questions and comments can be sent to RDComp@spe.org

For more information visit http://www.spe.org/industry/competition.php